It wasn’t completely unheard of for Bruce to appear in the
manor in costume, but it was certainly unusual. Sufficiently unusual that
Selina got up to investigate when she saw him pass the door of the morning room
in costume except for the mask. It was the look she liked best—usually, but not wandering
through the manor like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. It was nearly dawn when
they got back to Gotham, too late for him to go into the city as Batman but too
early to expect Alfred to be up. Bruce said he could at least slip down to the
cave and look through the logs before Alfred was up to make breakfast. Selina
went to the morning room to sift through the backlog of mail. She was just
finishing when she looked up and saw the caped specter passing the door. She
followed it into the dining room, where it turned, decanter in hand, to face
her.

Selina looked him up and down, and then, unable to come up
with a better opening, she meowed.

“I needed a drink,” Bruce announced, answering the obvious
question. “It’s only grain alcohol down in the chem lab.”

“Logs must have been pretty bad,” Selina guessed.

“There are no logs. I had to call Barbara to find
out what happened, and then it took ten minutes to talk her out from behind that
hologram.”

“Uh oh,” was all Selina could think to say, which wasn’t
helpful so she waited quietly while Bruce poured his drink, took a sip, added
another inch of liquid to the glass, and then sat.

“Robin is in the hospital,” he began, “Courtesy of
Batgirl. He’ll be fine, but there may be a lawsuit. St. Stephen’s was closer
than Leslie’s clinic, and they apparently don’t have a pat admittance policy for
‘masks’ the way the larger downtown hospitals do. They weren’t going to unmask him
or anything; they just didn’t have a procedure for no last name, no insurance
card, etc. Batgirl took their questions the wrong way, got the idea they wanted
to remove his mask, and she, uh…”

“Protected his identity?”

“Something like that. Fortunately, it was an emergency room, and there were plenty of bandages on hand.”

“Okay, backup, how did Robin wind up in the emergency room
‘courtesy of Batgirl’ in the first place?”

“That’s asking a lot,” Bruce noted dryly.
“Okay. When we left, Tim was being punished for the fake ID. He did okay
with the research paper that I assigned and Barbara graded. He wasn’t
faring so well with Cassie rating his fighting performance. Rather than
accept twenty-eight rounds of Zogger, he found an
alternative. He started investigating a false identity ring that turned
out to be operating out of—where else—the Iceberg.

“Cobblepot wouldn’t involve himself in anything that
petty. It was just a side business one of his lieutenants was running, but in
staking out the Iceberg, Robin discovered something much bigger—or so he
thought. Cobblepot has been meeting with Dr. Bartholomew, that’s Arkham’s
Dr. Bartholomew, twice a week. Robin even followed one of the Iceberg hostesses
out to Bartholomew’s house a few times.”

“So what?”

“Robin made a perfectly reasonable inference given the
facts on hand. He concluded that Cobblepot must be up to something, manipulating
Arkham admissions and releases through Bartholomew. Assuming Bartholomew was
being bribed, blackmailed, or mind controlled, he… acted appropriately given
what he knew.”

“Still no sign of Batgirl or a fire extinguisher in this
gripping tale, Stud.”

“You wanted it to make sense,” he reminded her.

“I also wanted a brandy,” she reminded him.

Bruce got up from his chair, took a second glass from the
sideboard, poured an inch of brandy into it, and handed it over silently.
Then
he resumed.

“Tim reasoned that if Bartholomew was being bribed or
blackmailed, physical intimidation—”

“Read: ‘roughing him up.’”

“—Physical intimidation was the quickest way to get some
answers. And if he was being controlled, pain is often an effective means to break
the hold. His method was sound; it was just his choice of location that
was… ill-considered.”

“Hang on,” Selina downed her brandy in a gulp. “Okay, hit
me.”

“He apparently confronted Bartholomew ‘in the act’ as he
was coming out of Oswald’s office, as in only steps away from the Iceberg bar. King
Snake was having a birthday party in the back, and there was a tray of something
called Bourbon Street Blazes. Barbara looked it up and found it’s made
from Sambucca, Jaeggermeister, and high-proof rum.”

“That’ll burn.”

“Yes it will. So will Robin’s cape if it’s spattered with
the stuff.”

“Enter the fire extinguisher.”

“Which Batgirl thought was a weapon. Her assumption was reasonable too.
She saw an old
Two-Face henchman running at Robin with an object that looked threatening.”

“But she also saw his cape was on fire, right?”

“How would I know, I was in Metropolis talking to a rolltop desk at
the time. I’m telling you what Barbara told me.”

“Okay, okay. Continue.”

“Sambucca, Jaegermeister, high proof rum. It burns.
Cobblepot, Sly, Raven, Bartholomew, a dozen Ghost Dragons, a pair of former
Two-Face henchmen, Croc and Kiteman; all at St. Stephens with mild to moderate
smoke inhalation, second and third degree burns, and assorted contusions. Fair
to say we’ve hit a new milestone in Robin/Batgirl conflicts. I think Dick and
Barbara’s worst fight started with him asking her to do his algebra homework and
ended with her gluing him into his gauntlets after he put limburger cheese in
her utility belt.”

“I don’t believe this is the crack team that kept me from
the Katz collection,” Selina grumbled, rubbing her forehead. “Well, at least
they didn’t burn down the Iceberg, right?” she sighed, making the best of it.

“Actually…” Bruce began.

“They burned down the Iceberg?!”

“Not to the ground, but as of the arson report Barbara was just
downloading when I called, it’s a hollow cinder that
won’t be doing business for quite some time.”

“My god, Oswald will go nuts!”

“Funny you should put it that way. He’s being transferred
to Arkham as soon as St. Stephen’s is finished with him. Some kind of
psychological ‘control
issues’ that have been building since the Gotham Post party.”

“Wha-?” Selina asked blankly.

“Selina, we rounded up every first, second, third and fourth tier
rogue in the city before that fundraiser. That put a serious dent in Cobblepot’s criminal operations, but a worse dent in the legitimate nightclub’s
regular clientele. Ninety
percent of his customers, and all of the customers he cares about, disappeared in a
matter of weeks. That role as ‘Emperor Penguin,’ publicly lording it over his
unique criminal empire, is a fundamental part of Oswald Cobblepot’s being. He
needs it. And when he saw it swept out from under him, there was a… reaction.”

“So he’s been seeing this Bartholomew from Arkham twice a
week?”

“That how it looks.”

Selina took a deep breath, taking it all in, then looked up
at Bruce and started to chuckle.

“Glad to be home?”

He grunted.

“By first is a stuff of stars and winter hearths,” Eddie
recited, although his swollen nose made the M sound like a B.

The other inmates in the Metropolis prison infirmary didn’t
seem to mind. They were gathered around, hanging on the Riddler’s every word as he told
the story of his capture (yet again). This was his seventh time telling the
story, and there would likely be seven more before these Metropolis dolts sorted
through the paperwork revoking his early release from Arkham and mandating his
return to Gotham. Eddie didn’t mind, for these Metropolis criminals (dimwits
though they were) made an appreciative audience.

“By second, a southern redneck or a tasty snack,” he
continued, pausing to give the brighter ones a chance to put it together for
themselves. “By
whole— and then, by friends, I pulled a firecracker frob by sleeve and hurled it
into Superban’s face. ‘By whole,’ I told hib, ‘is quite an effective
diversion!’”

“It bite not be able to hurt hib, but it certainly is
startling when you’re not expecting it,” Eddie explained.

There was a chorus of grunting agreement among
his listeners.

“I still don’t understand how he got welded inside a giant
robot,” a Prankster henchman confided.

“Shh, he’ll get to it,” his colleague whispered. “Now be
quiet, I want to hear this part about the KINKY FRIEND SPOOF TUTOR. I think I
almost got it figured out.”

The cluster of listeners around Tim’s sickbed wasn’t as
harmonious as that around Riddler’s. Robin had been released from the hospital by mid-afternoon, but he
couldn’t exactly go home. The Iceberg fire was big news. Robin’s involvement
had also made the news, and there was no way Tim Drake could go back to the Brentwood
dorms with the same kind of injuries Robin had suffered. It was agreed he would
stay with Dick and Barbara for a few days. They just got him settled in when
Cassie came over, still feeling bad she didn’t know the fire extinguisher wasn’t
a weapon. It was unbearably awkward, and Tim tried to lighten the mood by
resurrecting an old argument with Dick:

“See, Bro, if I didn’t have pants, those burns would’ve been
third degree,” he noted proudly.

“Maybe, but my costume had sex appeal,” Dick said, looking
at Barbara rather than Tim as he answered.

“So does your current costume,” Barbara answered.

“Uhm, ew? Minor present?” Tim called, hoping they wouldn’t
be carrying on like this throughout his stay.